You must be thinking about what exactly are “entrepreneur forums”, right? Well, entrepreneur forums are web communities consisting of fresh as well as experienced entrepreneurs. Such communities and forums act as a genuine platform to have conversations dedicated to the growth and maintenance of a startup business and venture. How great is that?
It’s an innovative approach to doing business. Here’s why!
You can dig up new business ideas
Share marketing strategies
Find a suitable digital mentor
Get in touch with potential clients
Form your own community with like-minded business people
Starting a new business is the most exciting activity ever. However, it has its own challenges as well, just like any other innovative deed. What challenges am I talking about? Well, it takes a lot of patience and persistence to see your dream turning into reality. It may get frustrating and overwhelming for early-stage entrepreneurs. But worry no more! Here we are, with the list of best online forums for entrepreneurs 2021.
Thanks to these online forums, you get to see so many people dealing with the same business obstacles and you get to learn a lot from them. Trust me. Connecting with such people who have already experienced the stage of business that you are in, will prevent you from making common mistakes and help you make the best of the available time. Don’t you think?
When our team thecodework talks with clients, we get to learn a lot from their insecurities and their experience alone. So can you imagine the level of knowledge that you may gain while conversing with so many entrepreneurs in such communities?
As we are an MVP development company that deals with early-stage startups, we decided to put together a list of the top 10 online communities that you can join to connect with your likes. Do read the whole article if you really want your business to rise and shine.
How to pick the community that suits you the best?
With the huge number of online forums for entrepreneurs, you may come across people with various experience levels, attitudes, opinions, perspectives, and so on. This is the point where you are going to get a little confused about your prioritization. See,
Begin with the most popular online forums to get an idea about what people are talking about. ,
Once you do that, check out the precise pages and discussions that are relevant to you and your business.
Take part in the conversations and try to drive them towards your problems and knowledge gaps.
The forum where you succeed to do so, be as active as you can be there. However, don’t stop. Keep exploring the other online communities simultaneously.
So are we good to go now? Let’s check out the forums that I have been waiting to share with you.
Small-Business-Forum.net is a generic online community where users can post questions and answer as well. These are further managed by a team of administrators of the forum. Not just that, there is also an extensive diversity of sub-topic forums.
They are usually related to starting business, financial obstacles as well as expanding your business. It covers every topic from marketing to maintaining a business venture. What else do we need?
2.BizWarriors
BizWarriors deals with a wide range of articles that engage in numerous business and financial agendas. The tag line of this forum is somewhat a mini description of what the attitude of an entrepreneur should be. Wanna know? It’s called – “Create. Collaborate. Conquer.”
Do you resonate with this description? If yes, do check it out!!
3. Small Business Brief
Small Business Brief is a pretty comprehensive website. This one is a hidden gem when it comes to insightful articles and information related to the industry that you belong to.
The best part is the organization of the site. The user experience to be precise. The articles are segregated as per the industries that each piece of data belongs. How awesome is that? Needless to say, there are sessions of genuine discussions related to the industries and articles as well.
And guess what? They correspondingly display a database of forms in addition to templates related to situations that are very common in business metrics. All this, totally free of cost. Can you imagine?
4. CNET Small Business and Startups Forum
You may be familiar with CNET from the perspective of a consumer technology in addition to a computing analysis site. However, there’s more that you need to know!
CNET also hosts numerous business forums that are valuable to entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. This includes a small business forum. Entrepreneurs just post their doubts and get help through this forum. They also host valuable discussions covering various topics. Do check them out.
5. QuickBooks Online Community
Payroll, accounting, as well as taxes happens to be the least fun fragments of doing business. Don’t you agree? However, finances are important, right? So here’s what you can do.
Check out the Quickbooks Online Community. It is undoubtedly, one of the best online forums to discuss financial topics that are relevant to startups and business owners.
Are you familiar with Reddit? Then you will love Warrior Forum. The layout is almost similar. Forums are categorized as per topic, and you can up-vote or down-vote a post as a part of the community.
As with any other platform, the trending and popular posts are always at the beginning of the list. This helps you to understand what is trending in the startup community and somehow reflect that in your business as well.
7. Bank of America Small Business Online Community
Giant financial institutions, like the Bank of America, are important as they aid entrepreneurs and budding startups with the capital. Don’t you agree?
In a similar quest, the Bank of America has taken the extra mile to support startups. They have created an online forum that hosts discussions between entrepreneurs and experts on various topics. Not just that, they also host podcasts to highlight business-related issues that prevail.
How thoughtful is that? Tell me!
8. Business Advice Forum
Let’s talk about a great classic-style forum now, shall we? This one is as petite as online forums should be. You can casually start discussing and asking questions related to growing and managing your business, digital marketing, and even a marketplace to hire/buy/sell websites or whole other businesses. Sounds good right?
They similarly have a segment that is dedicated to serving entrepreneurs and helping them get access to marketable capital that doesn’t include traditional banks.
This one is just wholesome.
9. Startup Nation
StartupNation is devoted to entrepreneurship in addition to starting new business ventures. They also offer a vast amount of resources that help entrepreneurs in their quest.
The goodies that they offer include:
Articles related to starting a business and growing it from scratch.
An entrepreneurship podcast, that is open to all.
A holistic business community of like-minded members to grow and flourish together.
Alignable isn’t just a business forum, but also a peer-to-peer community of business owners as well as entrepreneurs. How cool is that?
Here you can exchange referrals, find expert advice, build a professional relationship with business owners, and whatnot! The best part is that you may sign up and get in touch with connections from your industry only!
Doesn’t it sound great?
Niche Categories & Industry-Specific Forums for entrepreneurs
I know how difficult it is o find industry-specific forums. So let’s ease that out for you. Are you ready? Then check out this list:
Creative COW – this one is for the creative professionals out there.
ChefTalk – this one is for the restaurant industry community.
Women’s Business Network – As the name suggests, this one is for female entrepreneurs as well as business professionals.
Retire at 21 – This one is for the young entrepreneurs out there.
Black Businesses Matter – this is a community for African American startups and entrepreneurs.
Zebras Unite – this one is a bit unique. It includes socially responsible entrepreneurs.
StartOut – this community includes LGBTQ entrepreneurs.
Incubators and Accelerators – to grow your business
So who are Incubators and accelerators? See, Incubators and accelerators help budding startups and businesses by guiding the development process, assisting them in creating a business plan. And guess what? They also help with the funding. How cool is that?
These are characteristically started by a corporation or any local municipal organization. The purpose is to help new businesses and startups get going, with the allocated funds. Check out this list if it is of any help to you:
Y Combinator – offers yearly seed money to particular startups. Some of the big brands like Stripe, Door dash, and Airbnb are some of the few who started from this platform.
EO Network – this happens to be a peer-to-peer membership-only system for linking entrepreneurs with business experts for development and support.
Side Hustle Nation – it helps entrepreneurs and budding startups develop as well as grow their “side hustle” into a successful venture,
StartupWind – they collaborate with small & medium businesses, universities, as well as large enterprises to help them formulate new ideas and launch successful ventures around them.
Online Platforms to Sell Your Products & Services
Now, e-commerce has become the most important platform for online business, don’t you agree? Especially online startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. Selling your products online helps your business reach more people and communities, so why not?
Check out this list of the existing best e-commerce platforms. Most of them have online community forums as well as bonus resources for entrepreneurs and small business owners. You surely don’t want to miss this.
E-commerce Platforms:
Amazon – the very obvious and the best one that exists at present.
eBay – frequently ignored in 2021, it still is a powerhouse when it comes to small and medium businesses.
Etsy – an exclusive direct-to-consumer website for artists and craft-loving people. It supports independent sellers as well.
Shopify – influential eCommerce platform to start, grow and manage online store and website.
Square – recognized for its point-of-sale (POS) solutions. It correspondingly features numerous resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Pinterest – this may not be a particular e-commerce platform. But just like Instagram, people are discovering ways to use Pinterest to build a community that sells or at least discovers sites that sell. How convenient for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Freelancer Platforms:
Upwork – one of the most wanted freelancing platforms that are available on the internet. Helps you endorse your services or even hire good talent for the brand or company that you run.
Fiverr – mostly dedicated to hiring for the brand or company that you run.
Freelancer.com – an additional platform to hire talented freelancers in addition to promoting your services.
Overview
Wrapping up, this is a huge topic to cover. No matter how many online forums for entrepreneurs and businesses you list out, there will always be more. However, I genuinely hope that you have found this to be insightful, at least to cement your foundation to discovering information related to your business or startup.
Choosing to be an entrepreneur is a huge decision to take and, we genuinely applaud you for taking this leap of faith. With the roller coaster journey of a startup, life is not as easy in the early stages. However, when you connect with these online communities for entrepreneurs, you get to come across a lot of people who are at your phase or have overcome your phase.
Trust me, it’s the best motivation that you can have. Even the big brands like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, as well as Google – all struggle in the beginning. So it’s okay. Growing together as a community is a good step for small business owners as well as entrepreneurs. So go ahead with all the lists that we have provided here.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur who is stuck with business ideas, do reach out to us at @thecodework. We help early-stage startups build their MVP which eventually helps them validate their ideas in the market. So do get in touch.
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